What literary discussion group did C.S. Lewis help lead at Oxford?

C.S. Lewis helped lead The Inklings, an informal literary discussion group at Oxford.

The Inklings met mainly at Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s. Members read aloud from works in progress and discussed literature, mythology, religion, and storytelling. The group was not a formal society with a fixed membership list, so accounts of its participants can vary.

J.R.R. Tolkien was among Lewis’s closest fellow Inklings. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also important members, while meetings were associated with locations including Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and the Eagle and Child pub.

The group’s name is sometimes confused with established literary movements such as Bloomsbury. The Inklings were instead a small, conversation-based circle whose discussions supported the development of major works, including Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s fiction and apologetics.